


Eyes Like the Surface

by Azilver



Series: Hansen AUs [5]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, M/M, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-23
Updated: 2014-05-21
Packaged: 2018-01-16 19:04:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1358491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azilver/pseuds/Azilver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He watches the man with coral hair and eyes like the surface.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Sheplooslash asked for merman!chuck and fisherman!herc  
> It turned out a lot less fluffy and cute than expected.

 He’s always been curious, inquisitive, and too stubborn to listen to the others. Sometimes, he thinks maybe he’s looking for something. Other times he thinks he’s waiting.

He spends more time near the surface than most of his kind and that’s how he first sees the man with coral hair and eyes like the surface. He comes with others on a floating-rock and they hunt the fish from the surface. There’s something about him that has him yearning for more… he doesn’t know.

He watches the man with eyes like the surface and he wants to know him; wants to know what makes him smile, how he feels and what he thinks on the long times he just watches the water with sad eyes. Many times the surface lightens and darkens as he watches the man with coral hair and eyes like the surface.

Then he gets too close, too reckless and the surface hunters snare him with their catch. When they see him there are many noises and they stare and touch. He’s scared, lying on their floating-rock. The man with coral hair and eyes like the surface isn’t making noise like the others and he doesn’t look at him the same way- he looks sadder now, like he knows his fear.

There’s another man with coral hair, one he’s seen many times with the other man, who grabs at him but his man with coral hair stops him. He holds the other back and makes noises that make the other men stop. This time he approaches, ignoring the other man with coral hair’s noise to gently remove the snare from his fins. The touch sends warmth through him and he, for a moment, hears the man’s mind-  _calm, I’ll set you free_ \- and understands. He relaxes into the man with coral hair and eyes like the surface’s hands, lets him move him into the water. That last touch and he can hear that deep voice-  _Are you what watches us in depths? What calls?_

_Only you, my man with coral hair and eyes like the surface, only you._

He sinks beneath the dark water, trying to keep the man in his sight until he can no longer see him.

He still watches the man but from a distance. He notices that the other man with coral hair watches his man with coral hair and eyes like the surface except it’s with resentment and anger. In time the other men do too.

Until the night he hears so much noise as he reaches the surface. The other men have ensnared his man with coral hair and eyes like the surface- he’s thrashing in their grip, noises of fear and anger coming from him- and the other man like him looks pleased. He leans in and something happens which makes his man with coral hair go quiet, sadness and grief taking over his face. He doesn’t fight when they throw him into the water.

When his man with coral hair and eyes like the surface just sinks he races to him. He won’t just let him die, he can’t. He wraps the man in his arms, feeling the warmth already leaching from his body. His eyes are darkening even as they meet his own.

_Let me save you._

_I don’t deserve it._

_No. Let me._

_She’s gone, took my boy to them long ago. There’s nothing left for me._

_I’m here; I’ve been here so long, waiting for you to come._  He brushes man’s lips with his, just briefly.  _Come with me and live_.

The life in his man with coral hair and eyes like the surface is fading but he takes too long moments to study the  _other_  offering him something he doesn’t know. It hurts to see it happening.

_Please._ His grip on his man with coral hair and eyes like the surface tightens even as he tries to show him how much he wants this man… wants him in the depths with him, wants to show him his own world and never see that sad distant gaze again.  _Please._

As the light in his eyes fades, there is the faintest of assents in his thoughts. He grips the man tighter still, tilts his head back and bites down. Rich blood flows as he lets them sink deeper and deeper. He forces his own blood into the man and prays that it will work, like it did for him so long ago; a child given up to the sea in the hope for something he doesn’t remember anymore.

The change is slow but it happens. He tears at the rough covering of his lower limbs to see the man’s legs become scales and fins. He rips at the softer covering of his chest to see the slits carving themselves along his ribs, allowing him breathe again. And then he opens his eyes and they are no longer like the surface.

They are like the colour of the waves in the deep nights, bright even in the dark, beautiful.

He smiles at him, _Who are you?_

He has no answer but then his man with coral hair and eyes like the waves in the deep nights cups his face with a hand and he feels so many things-  _this is you_ \- light, wonder, precious, comfort, worth, love -  _my ocean-heart._

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Herc remembers all he's lost to the waters.

The changing tides and uncontrolled nature of the waves have always drawn him to the water since he can remember. Despite all he’s lost to it, Herc will always love the ocean.

Angela and his boy.

One lost to the fears of the other lost to his unforgiving nature.

Things had been hard for months with no sign of change when they had come- a group who had followed a madman they called a seer, called the ‘Prophet’. At first few had listened to the man but as time wore on and the catch kept diminishing, the land drying further each day; more and more turned to the man for ‘guidance’, a cure to the strange blight they were suffering.

Unlike most, Herc believed that time would change their fortunes, if they only waited. He’d heard similar stories of hardship from the fishermen and soldiers he’d met in his travels. Not Angela though; when her brother’s boat was lost to a storm months before she had changed, becoming distant and withdrawn.

Angela had been cold to their son for a long time, it was no surprise that he sought out his father whenever he could, crawling or toddling around in his search for the welcoming warmth and safety of the man’s arms, instead of the bare acknowledgement and cool regard of his mother.

He had come home one day to the happy cries of his son who ran into his arms, and the ‘Prophet’ in his house. He had barely acknowledged Herc but had eyed the child in his arms intently. Something in Herc had stilled, his arms tightening around his boy.

“Tell me,” The ‘Prophet’ had said, intent on Chuck. “is this _your_ child?” The strange emphasis seemed to startle Herc’s wife who had sat up with sudden clarity in her eyes. “Surely, as a mother, you would know the warm connection with a child born of your body?”

Cold had spread through him further at his wife’s knowing look. “I have not felt this child as mine for many months.”

“Angela!”

“No, husband. I would know my own son! This… thing barely acknowledges me. You are the one he goes to, not his mother like a normal child! He is not mine!”

“Tell me then, fisherman,” The ‘Prophet’ cast dark eyes on him. “Perhaps, did you mistake a changeling child for your own? Did you bring back a merchild as your own?”

“No!”

“It seems I have found the reason for the oceans anger. Return the sea-child home and you shall once again reap wealth from her.”

It was all the reason Angela, and the villagers, had needed to hold him back as they took a screaming Chuck from him. By the time he had fought his way through them it was too late. With a last cry, Chuck had been thrown into the deep.

For the first time in his life, Herc had struck out against his wife. Her face had bloomed with blood and shock even as the tide swelled and crashed. “Is this what you wanted?” He had cried as the winds had picked up around them, the waters beginning to churn with fury.  “You kill our boy and now curse our home?” He’d held back his murderous fury, trembling with effort, as he met the eyes of the strangers and their ‘prophet’. “Leave, all of you! Run with them, Angela, because your sins will follow you as I won’t.”

The storm had raged for days, taking many lives and through it all Herc had combed the shore for any sign of his boy. In the unending darkness and wind, the strangers had left, Angela disappearing with them.

In time things returned to their previous providence. The village remained distant, ashamed at their actions and weary of Herc’s rightful anger. It had been so long since then and he always returned to the sea, perhaps hoping against hope that one day he’d find his boy out there.

Like so many other days and nights he looks out over the water, just letting his thoughts drift away on the tide. And like for so long now he feels like he’s being watched. A youth spent in other men’s wars had attuned him to the stare of the enemy but it wasn’t the gaze of a threat.

Then they catch the merboy. The merman, he supposed, looking comparable to a human just settling into their adult years. Looking on as his brother and men yelled and prodded at him, muttering about money and fame, Herc studied the creature before them. He was beautiful- his tail an iridescent teal, fins a delicate fan even as sharper edges lines his forearms, deep lines slit the skin along his ribs exposing the deep red of gills.

The boy is afraid and his fear sparks something in Herc. He pushes through his men, ordering them to stand back. His fins are caught up in the nets and he’s thrashing trying to free himself but Herc needs to calm him down first. “Shhh, peace boy.”

The boy meets his gaze and stills, something passing between them like recognition though he cannot fathom why. Gently, he unhooks the nets and gently lifts the boy into his arms and wonders, _Are you what watches us in the depths? What calls?_

_Those dark eyes warm and he is strangely unsurprised when he hears a voice._

_Only you, my man with coral hair and eyes like the surface, only you._

He lets the boy slip into the water, watching as he sinks into the depths, those dark eyes never leaving his.

A part of him knew.

He’s not blind to the crews growing anger and his brother’s ever present resentment. They blame him for setting their prize free, their chance at fame and gold. And the night they corner him on his boat is more disappointment than shock. Scott stands back, never getting directly involved, as always and Herc knows he cannot win against them all but even so he hisses, “Coward.”

Predictably Scott starts, fury clouding over his face as he stalks towards his brother and leans in, “Let go, brother, let go like your boy.”

All fight leaves him and he allows them to tip him into the dark cold waters. Strong hands grab for him as he sinks and it’s the boy again, this time looking at Herc with fear _for_ him.

_Let me save you._ _He hears through the growing haze. The mer doesn’t understand, doesn’t know._

_I don’t deserve it._

_No. Let me._

_He thinks of Chuck, pulled from him and screaming, of his son with happy shrieks of laughter and trusting eyes. Of Angela with her cold dismissing gaze changing into shock with his rage._

_She’s gone, took my boy to them long ago. There’s nothing left for me._

_The mer shakes his head stubbornly, hold tightening._ _I’m here; I’ve been here so long, waiting for you to come._  And kisses Herc, gently.  _Come with me and live_.

Some part of him realises what he is being offered and stills his automatic denial. He wants this, wants to be changed and to live a changed life away from the village and its nightmares, away from the guilty looks and denying faces. He wants this boy too.

And as darkness pushes past every thought he thinks _Yes_.


End file.
